I feel like since this is a FOSS platform, while it might not be as flexible as something standalone, it would be nice to include all the batteries in Lemmy. This is something we can do better than Reddit.
Currently we like general topics to make sure that there's enough conversations being made. If the science community gets pretty big, we'd indeed like to divide it into things that take a lot of space on the community.
I also think that instances that are specialized are pretty cool.
I think you have the "Randomly appear posts at the top" bug that is unfortunately fairly common. I would hope it's fixed in the next update to Lemmy we're doing tomorrow morning.
It should work... I can see that email was in fact sent to your email...
If your password is more than 60 characters long, you need to shorten it.. This could also be some kind of bug.. I'm not sure. We are updating Lemmy tomorrow morning so maybe that'll fix it?
For question 1: I don't think that's a feature unfortunately.
For question 2: The main screen has three views : Subscribed (All your subscriptions) / Local (All Beehaw communities) / All (All of the stuff on Lemmy)
My heart would cry when the book just falls at the bottom of the machine. I wish they had one of those fancy mechanisms that lowers down the item for you.
I think cosmetic like a flair or badge would be really cool. Private community, uh, not so much.. I'd worry that we start listening more to people who have access to that community.
On the open collective, you can see all the expenses we pay. Worth noting that the current upgrades to hosting this month are not account for.
This month we expect our hosting costs to be between 96$ and 336$ because we're being prorated on Digital Ocean and trying to scale to keep the site running smooth.
I also would like to point out that First Hexbear has not federated, nor made any plans to federate with Beehaw, over concerns with Beehaw moderation
I'm kinda interested to read that because I've personally read the opposite.
You wrote one sentence for each question when you first submitted so that's all we got. We are kinda harsh sometimes when it's hard to gauge someone. Sorry about that.
It's been approved!
It's highly possible that it just wasn't approved because your application message didn't provide enough information to make a judgement.
If you want to tell me your username, I'll look for it and approve it.
If people are spreading conspiracy theories or harmful content, we do remove it of course. I think the example of Facebook is exactly where moderation is important. Not where downvotes are important.
Because to put it simply, conspiracy theories and harmful content usually get posted in echo chambers where people will agree anyways so a downvote does nothing to solve the problem imo.